Cambridge CELTA Written Assignments Criteria

Assignment 3 – Language Skills Related Tasks

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resubmission
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I declare that this assignment is my own work and I have not copied from others nor let
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Specific assessment criteria:

 correctly using terminology that relates to language skills and sub-skills

 relating task design to language skills practice

 finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using
written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

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You are allowed one resubmission. Include the original with the resubmission.Assignment
3: Language Skills Related Task

Length: 750 – 1000 words

Aims:
 Identify which skills this material can be used to develop
 Design tasks that help the learners develop the identified skills
 Write a rationale saying why this material is suitable to develop the identified skills
and why your tasks help the learners do this

Assume your class is comprised of young adult intermediate learners.

Part 1: Skills identification

Identify 2 receptive sub-skills (e.g., reading for gist) that the text “Morocco: Land of
Medinas, Minarets and Mystery” could be used to develop. Say what they are and why this
text is appropriate for use in developing these sub-skills.

Identify 1 productive skill that could be developed as follow-on work. Define the productive
skill and say why this skill would be a useful follow-on using the attached article.

You should reference your background reading in this part.

Part 2: Task rationale

Justify your task design for the 3 (or more) tasks you have created to develop the skills
identified in Part 1. For each task, you should mention:
 how your task is suitable for developing the skill identified
 why your task is appropriate for the attached article
 why your task would be useful for the learners

You should reference your background reading in this part.

Bibliography
You must use more than one source and provide a full reference for each one. You can
follow this sample if you do not know how to reference a source.

http://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/apa-referencing/getting-started-in-apa-referencing

Appendix: Tasks
Please attach the tasks you have written along with the material. They should be written for
the learners, not other teachers.
Important: Do not present this assignment as a lesson plan. This assignment assesses your
ability to write tasks for learners, not plan lessons.

Tips:
 Your tasks must be designed to develop the sub-skills you identified in Part 1. You
should not, for example, identify reading for gist as one of your receptive sub-skills,
then design a task that actually develops learners’ ability to read for detail.
 Your background reading will help you understand the link between task design and
skills better.
 Good reference material includes The Practice of English Language Teaching by
Jeremy Harmer, How to Teach English by Jeremy Harmer or Learning Teaching by Jim
Scrivener.
Morocco: Land of Medinas, Minarets and Mystery
Story by Margaret Deefholts (for Travel Writers’ tales)

https://www.travelwriterstales.com/16-morocco.htm

Morocco conjures up images of medinas,

minarets – and mystery. A land of exotic
perfumes, plaintive music, intrigue and
romance.
Casablanca, the first place on my itinerary isn't any of the above. It is a large commercial metropolis, bland as
any other international hub. Traffic flows along broad boulevards and the sidewalks are busy with business-
suited executives, camera toting tourists and women in flowing caftans. Nothing special.
Ah, but hang on! I walk into the King Hussein II mosque, and my impressions shift. A blend of Moorish and
traditional Moroccan architecture, the mosque boasts extravagantly painted wood ceilings, intricately tiled mosaic
walls, and flamboyant chandeliers: the result of seven years' hard work by 10,000 artists, craftsmen and
builders. The tour takes about an hour, and I emerge onto a broad terrace, dazzled by more than just the strong
sunlight and the view across an intensely blue Atlantic Ocean.
My companions – an all-woman group – are mostly from the USA and are new acquaintances to me and to one
another. We drive out of Casablanca, make a brief stop in Rabat, where a couple of horse guards stand at the
entrance to the Mohammed V mausoleum, the resting place of two Alouite kings.
Then, on to the delightful Kasbah des Oudaias. It is mid-day and the ramparts of the Kasbah rear against a
blazing blue sky; the sun is violent, hard, throwing sharp-edged shadows against the stone steps.
Inside the Kasbah, we thread our way through narrow lanes, flanked by blue walls, and I pause to photograph
doors framed by bougainvillea creepers and tropical ferns. Cats doze under awnings, a bike rests casually near
an open doorway, a small girl at a window smiles tentatively at me as I walk by. The lanes open up to a terrace,
its ramparts overlooking an expanse of ocean with the buildings of Rabat, like stacks of children's blocks, in the
distance.

Our days are as varied as the surroundings through which we drive: the high Atlas mountains, where the road
snakes and curls along barren rocky cliffs their edges falling away into deep canyons, or
the Sahara at dawn with dunes striped in waves of light and shadow and loping camels
silhouetted against the sky like cut-out figures.

One afternoon we make an all too short halt at the spectacular Todra Gorge. The
enormous walls of the canyon shadow a little stream and at the far end of the cleft, the
rock face is bathed in golden sunlight. Two tribeswomen pose for my camera in
exchange for a handful of dirhams.

No Moroccan experience would be complete without sampling its cuisine: succulent

spiced lamb or beef garnished with olives and almonds often washed down with mint tea.
A cooking class is on the itinerary, but first a shopping trip for fresh vegetables and spices takes us into the souk
in Fes, a maze-like market of cobble-stoned aisles where shoppers and vendors haggle at top decibel, where
decapitated goats' heads are on display, and roosters perched on baskets crow loudly. We huddle to the side as
men pushing carts of who-knows-what under burlap wraps bawl a warning. The scent of oranges mingles with
the smell of fish.

Later, armed with the spoils of our expedition, we chop, peel, mix, stir and savour the result of our labours, or
more truthfully, the creation of our chef-teacher. The chicken in a thick spiced gravy served up on a traditional
clay terrine sits in the centre of the table, and using our fingers, we break off tender chunks of meat with pieces
of flat bread.

Later in our trip we are hosted to an overnight stay with a Berber family. The accommodation is simple, but the
welcome is warm. We take part in the everyday tasks of the household, making bread, cooking a meal and
watching the procedure involved in properly brewing mint tea.

When I return home after a trip, a pastiche of memories flicker by like a slide show in the mind's eye: old walled
medinas with their alleyways, secretive and mysterious, the haunting call to prayer from tall minarets; the vitality
of the huge Jemaa el Fnaa square in Marrakech, with snake handlers, drummers, acrobats and jugglers playing
to the crowds; the clop of horses, magnificent animals drawing carriages filled with tourists, and at nightfall, the
smoky smell of kebabs on the grill, and small arrows of fireworks zipping into the night sky. Magnifique!

This article was originally published on TravelWritersTales.com

Assignment 3 – Language Skills Related Tasks

Part 1: Skills Identification

For this assignment we are supposed to use the article called “Morocco: Land of Medinas,

Minarets and Mystery” by Margaret Deefholts. This article can be used to develop the

receptive skill of reading, with a view to develop the sub skills of reading for gist and reading

for specific information. The article would be suited to learners of intermediate language

ability due to its use of some literary language and words not often found in ordinary

conversational English. As for the sub skill of reading for gist, the article is good for

developing this sub-skill because Morocco is an interesting place many people want to travel

so there would be some interest from the students side in learning about the topic. It contains

a lot of information about locations in Morocco which means a student could read it and gain

an over all impression of what the place is like, gaining an overall idea of the topic, hence

satisfying the reading for gist skill. On the other hand, there are a lot of specific details about

particular places which would be useful when teaching reading for specific information. A

task can ask students particular questions about what is mentioned in the article and students

can answer based on their reading. As for productive skills, once read, this article can be used

to develop writing skills by creating a writing task based around a structured practice

exercise. A task would be developed where students read certain questions about the contents

of the article then they will write their answers.

Part 2: Task Rationale

Warmer
In designing the task overall I would adapt the top-down reading approach mentioned by

Scrivener (Scrivener p. 266). A good way to start the lesson would be to display some slides

of Morocco and of the places and items that are mentioned in the article. I would choose a

few photos and get the students familiar with the names of these items and places. I would

then put the question to students “what do you know about morocco?” then students could, in

groups, briefly discuss the question. After a few minutes I would take feedback.

Vocabulary

Following the warmer, I would introduce some vocabulary taken from the text which would

be unfamiliar to the target group of students. There are a lot of literary words used in the text

but I would choose ones that are more central to assisting with the reading for gist and

reading for specific information tasks. The words I choose are: itinerary, impression,

intricate, photograph, enormous, accommodation, memory. Hence I would pre-teach these

words since these are relevant to the context of the overall article. For itinerary, photograph

and accommodation, I could convey the meaning with images on slides, whereas with

enormous I would draw a scale showing where enormous fits in comparison to measures of

size such as small, big, huge. As for impression, memory and intricate, I would have to try

and explain these using more formal definitions that I would come up with.

Reading for Gist Task

I would introduce the task by holding up the article and pointing to it and ask them to read the

article and see which cities in Morocco the author visited, while reminding them that reading
for gist is a skill oriented around quick reading ability, just to get the overall idea of what the

article is talking about as mentioned by Scrivener (Scrivener p. 262), followed by ICQ's and

CCQ's. Then I would hand out the article and ask them to start reading, giving them 3

minutes. The article should be suitable for this task as it contains a lot of broad information

that can be gleaned from a quick reading. Following this I would open the class for a brief 1

minute feedback.

Reading for Specific Information Task

Following the gist exercise, I would put a few questions to the students and ask them to read

the article again. I would ask the following questions: What was the first place on the author's

itinerary? Which gender did the tour group consist of? Which city did they have the cooking

class in? What kind of tea did they drink with the Berber family?

I would give them 10 minutes to complete the activity followed by checking with partner and

group feedback. The exercise would be appropriate to the article since the questions relate to

the content of the article and it would be useful for the learners since they will have to consult

the dictionary at points to learn the meanings of new words which I haven't supplied them.

The task itself is suitable for developing the skill of reading for specific information because

it satisfies Harmer's criteria of 'authenticity' (Harmer p. 272) being that it is something written

with no concessions to foreigner language speakers, meaning that the student may need to re-

read parts of the article in order to answer certain questions, where the answer is not given so

clearly, as in the question about where did the tourists take the cooking class.
Productive Task - Writing

As a follow on I would set a writing task. Students will write two paragraphs describing two

places of interest which they have visited from their country while using the Morocco text as

an example to model their work on. Student work individually to write the paragraphs, while

I move around checking their writing and correcting it if I see anything wrong, which is to be

followed by checking with a partner. I consider this task useful to learners because it shows

students how to write about things familiar to them by imitating a model they have been

exposed to as in the instance of this article. (Scrivener, p. 241-244)

Appendix: Tasks

Appendix A

Gist task:

Which cities did the author visit in Morocco?

Specific information task:

What was the first place on the author's itinerary?

Which gender did the tour group consist of?

Which city did they have the cooking class in?

What kind of tea did they drink with the Berber family?

Productive task – Writing:

“Write two paragraphs about your thoughts of a place you have visited using the article about

Morocco as a model”
Appendix B

Gist task:

Answer: Casablanca, Fes, Marrakech

Specific information task:

Answer 1: Casablanca

Answer 2: Female

Answer 3: Fes

Answer 4: Mint tea

Bibliography

Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning Teaching. (3rd edition) Macmillan

Harmer,J.(2001) The Practice of English Language Teaching, (3rd Edition), Longman